Sherod is home.  He got in on Monday evening.  There was great joy and a retirement present to give him that was about the best thing I have gotten to do in a long, long time.  When we first got this little farmstead, the side building next to the big house, cute enough on the outside to make us both smile, was a disaster zone inside.  You could hardly step foot in the space; there was so much stuff you couldn’t even put your eyes anywhere it was so chaotic.  The front door was busted and the window wouldn’t shut.   So all Sherod’s manly, man, guy stuff ended up in the garage, and after a heavy rain, a lot of it got wet and had to get parceled out here and there in that space.

I got the door changed and a new storm door installed as well.  A small a/c unit that made life bearable after Wilma, when we had no power for almost a month, is now chugging away, keeping the space cool.  The junk got hauled away, everything is as clean as it’s been in a long, long time, and I was able to move all Sherod’s things into what is now his new workshop/man cave.  It was all there waiting for him to come home and we both have dreams of all the ways it will be a space of renewal and just plain fun for him.  Of course, it’s the tractor that’s held powerful sway the past two days.  I am not sure I will ever get to use it again…

Other pieces also fell into place.  We both received our letters of license that allow us to celebrate and serve in limited capacities as priests here in this diocese though we are still canonically resident in the Diocese of Southeast Florida. Today, we went up to B’ham where we met with the Ordinary, Bp, Sloan, who could not have been more gracious and kind.  It’s was the start of a conversation that I think and hope will go on quite a lot further and may some day lead me back to Latino ministries, if it be God’s will.

And finally this today:  we have surrendered our Florida driver licenses and gotten our new temporary ‘Bama ones.  Finality does not come all at once, it comes in swirls, rushes and eddies, in waves and layers.  But it comes.  We are here now. This is where we live.